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I love hearing from authors and publicists who’d like me to read and review their books. If you have a title you think I’d be interested in, please feel free to contact me at ibetnoonehasthisdamnid@yahoo.com .
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In the Shadow of Mt. TBR

1. The first rule of working in an office and getting along is establish dominance by drinking the last dribble of coffee, eating the food brought in by co-workers and leaving fresh-from-the-litter-pan-presents in the bosses dark-colored chair every morning. Then whenever anyone expresses their displeasure, relay the passage you read in your copy of The Anarchist Cookbook last night while cleaning one of your many assault rifles and planning the next meeting with your lawyer to finalize the settlement with your last employer.

2. I once gave my kids “sea mushrooms” for supper, but really they were canned clams. (It was a punishment, btw, for ditching the school bus and trying to skip school. It worked so well, they’ve never tried to skip since.)

3. When I think of carnivals I think of cotton candy, popcorn, candy apples and crazy-looking, inbred and toothless pedophiles running the controls on the Himalaya and taking tickets at the Fun House.

4. Lilacs are my favorite spring flower.

5. Things on my desk include an open box of Whoppers, a 2 liter of Diet Coke, a new box of Stridex, Maggie’s homework that she’s standing here waiting for help on, Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank (I just finished writing the review for it), a half-empty bag of Cheesy Poofs, and the little fliers about our town that I picked up from the city building (I put them in the books I send out from BookMooch).

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to taking the kids to the new skating rink that’s suppose to be Chuck E. Cheese meets SkateWorld and is probably priced like Disney World, tomorrow my plans include taking Maggie the old skating rink for her friend’s b-day party and trying to get as much of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet read as possible and Sunday, I want to enjoy a nice Sunday Service and grab the Kleenex while Mags and Gwen get baptized at our new church!

When my daughter announced her class was taking a field trip, I involuntarily shrieked “No!” but then had to realize that it was doubtful the kindergarten classes were going to prison or the dookie factory.

Indeed, it was the zoo. This would be safe and fun, I thought. Animals frolicking – what could go wrong?

Well, for starters, the baboon, who was frankly obsessed with amorous activities that didn’t require a partner.

“What’s he doing?” a few of the kids asked.

My husband, who was the only man who had come along to chaperone, decided he would deal with this question, and deal with it he did.

“That’s just the traditional baboon way of waving hello,” he said, sounding remarkably poised and knowledgeable.

“Oh,” a little boy in the class said. “Should we wave back?”

“Oh, God no.”

Next up: the “desert habitat” where an ancient camel proceeded to amuse the children by leaning down to eat his own shit. Without even moving his legs, the giraffe savored every bite as if it were the Christmas ham.

“Oooh, icky gross! I think I’m gonna hurl!”

“It’s just nature,” said one of the kids, trying to comfort my husband.

I first heard about Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark on the April Books Brought Home Library Thing thread (the discussion starts going around message 174). It created quite a stir, as everyone passed around their “bad parents and monstrous children” horror stories. With the conversations circulating, as well as it’s hilarious-but-shocking title, I knew I wanted to read this book. So I clicked on over to BookMooch, entered the title in the search bar, and voila! mooched the only copy available.

When it arrived in the mail on Saturday, I cracked open the book and just glanced at the title of the first chapter: There’s Always Tomorrow(land): “If You Really Loved Me, You’d Buy Me Pal Mickey”. The chapter’s about Celia planning and taking her family to Disney World. Before I realized it, I was at the end of the chapter, ripped envelope still in my lap, and bladder barely holding its ground after all the laughter. The whole book is like that, and you just about have to tear the book from your hands to put it down to make dinner, sleep or even go to the bathroom (okay, I admit it… Celia went there, too).

With the charm of a Southern Belle, and a snarky, sarcastic wit, Miss Celia expresses all that it is to be a mother/wife/career woman/person with the sense God gave a goose in this day and age. She tells of her experience trying to buy size 7 clothes for her six-year-old, and only finding outfits that’d make a Vegas showgirl feel naked. Later, she points out that grown women in character-embossed clothes need to grow up, which points out the Topsy-turvy nature of the American culture today: Children dressing like sexually mature adults and grown-ups dressing like school kids at play.

Each chapter’s title both encompasses its contents, while being surprising and tongue-in-cheek. A few examples of this are:

Yo Yo Yo! Where Can a Sista Get a Cowgirl Outfit?: Holidays Make This Mama Wanna Get in Your Grille

Weary Mom to Uppity Teens: At Least I Know Where the Continent of Chile Is

Field Trip, Fornification, and a Shit-Eating Giraffe: Who Says School Can’t Be Fun?

Montel’s Smoking Weed: (But Will He Share With Sylvia the Psychic?)

Reality Bites: Super Skanks Lewinsky and Hilton Are Fun to Watch, but Those 100-Pound Toddlers Rule!

The Butcher’s Great, the Baker’s Suffering: But How Is the Anti-Carb Frenzy Affecting the Candlestick Maker?

The Paradoxical Male: Smart Enough to Find “Me Time,” but Dumb Enough to Get Stuck Buying the Tampons

If It Ain’t On eBay, It Ain’t Worth Having: (Whoa! Is That Willie Nelson’s Face in Your Grits?)

Politicians Serve Up McValues: (With Extra Cheese on the Side)

Amidst the humor and anecdotes, Rivenbark manages to slip in facts and evidence that support her position, but you’re too busy laughing and enjoying her company to realize “Hey, there’s serious journalism going on here!”

I enjoyed Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbarkimmensely, and am going to buy a new copy from Amazon and have it shipped to my mom for Mother’s Day (don’t tell her, or you’ll ruin the surprise!). All the way through, I could just hear my mom’s voice in Rivenbark, and I know she’ll enjoy it as much as I did. While the book won’t stay with me as far as remembering specifics, the feeling of fun and laughter will live on, and I’m sure that when I re-read this review a year from now, I’ll remember specifics in the chapters mention, and laugh again. For the joy it’s given me and will give to my mom and myself in the future, I give Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark4 iout of 5 Krispy Kreme donuts:-D

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In this video clip, Celia Rivenbark opens up a book signing by reading an anecdote in an email from a friend.

Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or

Reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?

.

Yesterday one of my facebook friends sent me an invite to take one of those quizzes to see how much alike we were. It was the kind where you have 10 phrases to put in order, most to least, starting with what I hated the most. “Disappoint me” was top of the chart, even above “lie to me”, “ignore me” or “talk behind my back”.

At least with reading a book I love, then hating everything else by that author, I had that book one that I loved. It’s easier to take the rest of his or her writing, and I can just shrug it all off as a fluke. As much as I love The Book Thief, I’m slightly worried that nothing else by Markus Zusak will be any good. However, if I should happen to give another of his books a try and hate it, It will not sully my memory of The Book Thief.

On the other hand, if I pick up a book by an author I love, and hate it, there’s a sense that the author has failed me personally. We have a relationship, of sorts, and he or she did not hold up his end of the bargain. He or she has FAILED ME, and with every book I read thereafter I will hold this little uncertainty, a distrust, and wonder if he or she is going to screw me over again.

The worst of all, though, is that first experience reading an author and loving the whole book, every word is perfectly placed, his pace perfect, his story compelling, and you sit there and think “How on EARTH have I lived my life without reading this author!” Then you get to the last three or four chapters, the last 10-15 pages, and he totally and completely bottoms out in epic-sized proportions. And now, because of this, every book you touch by him you are leery to pick up, no matter how fascinating, intriguing or compelling the story line, because you wonder if he’s going to “screw you over” again. AND he’s one of your bookfriend’s favorite authors, so she’s always sharing whatever one of his 147 just-out-in-paperback-because-he-has-a-new-release-ever-five-minutes-book she has just finished, and you look at every single one she thrusts at you to read, with the proclamation, “This is his best book yet!”, as if it were an adorable puppy you just watched get bitten by a foaming-at-the-mouth, crazy rabid squirrel and you know it’s only a matter of time until the big-eyed, heart-tugging pup turns on you. But you finally relent and take her offering, however, no matter how good the writing is, you say to yourself, “Oh, sure it’s good now, but is he going to screw me over in the last few chapters like the other one?” So you can’t enjoy it AT ALL because every page comes with that feeling you have as you turn the Jack-in-the-box crank as “the monkey though ’twas all in fun….” plunks out. EVERY page you ever read by him again is saturated with the aftertaste of that massive let down.

Dean Koontz, I’m talking to you.

If you’d like to play along, or read other Booking Through Thursday answers, click the button above :-)

After reading The Darkest Evening of the Year and loving it, loving it, loving it… then having it all turn to crap in the last three or four chapters, I feel like Buddy in this vid clip while reading From the Corner of His Eye.